2011/04/03

Sloppy journalism (as usual)

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Some reporters misunderstood a pictogram (obviously showing a flare hanging on a parachute) on an illumination mortar bomb (there's "ILLUM PARA" written on it - how dumb are those reporters?!) for a star of david and a crescent.

End result: A conspiracy theory about Israeli weapons in Libya.

On another note, German news reported about the crash of a U.S. warplane (A-10) with "11000" rounds of ammunition on-board (many news outlets copy-pasted the faulty dpa message).

Let's look at the Spiegel news; it cites the dpa nonsense of 11000 rounds AND a much closer to reality report from a local newspaper about 1500 rounds. The Spiegel author KNEW that the figure was obviously fishy, but he DID NOT spend one minute on a quick wikipedia check in order to learn that an A-10 has a capacity for 1,174 rounds (or 1,350 if you look in the German wikipedia) and is written "A-10", not "A10".

I've seen a Heckler & Koch MP5 called a machine gun and the MP7 called a "Sturmgewehr", the Mk-144 Guided Missile Launcher for the RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missile called a "Stalinorgel", the old Rhein-class navy tenders called destroyers, the PzH 2000 called a tank, automatic pistols called a revolver, a rifle called a "Flinte" and the above mentioned A-10 called a "Düsenjäger"

To me, it is indeed often sloppy reporting or pure ignorance, but sometimes there's an agenda behind these misnomers as they are repeated after being pointed out. A tank or destroyer is more offensive than a howitzer or tender. Nothing better than a "Stalinorgel" to conjure up terrifying images of death and destruction - never mind it is designed as a point-defense missile system.

There's not much one can do when one comes across such BS but take the rest of the text with a grain, or better two grains, of salt - if one doesn't want to stop reading completely, that is...